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2006

Raz, Authority, and Conceptual Analysis

Brian Bix
University of Minnesota Law School, bix@umn.edu

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Brian Bix, Raz, Authority, and Conceptual Analysis, 50 Am. J. Juris. 311 (2006), available at http://scholarship.law.umn.edu/
faculty_articles/449.

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 RAZ, AUTHORITY, AND CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS
BRIAN H. Bix*

I. INTRODUCTION

In "Authority: Revisiting the Service Conception,"' l Joseph Raz reflects on

his work on the nature of authority, defending much of what he has written on
the subject, while offering some additional clarifications and modifications.
I must leave to others a more direct assessment of Raz's views on authority,
and the revisions he has suggested in this most recent paper. I will instead
focus on some of the methodological considerations he discusses in this paper;
in particular, I will compare and contrast Raz's discussion here about
conceptual analysis and the concept of authority with his recent analyses of
the conceptual analysis of law.

II. THE CONCEPT OF AUTHORITY

Raz reaffirms roughly the same view of authority he has been advocating
for over 25 years.2 Raz argues (here I summarize a detailed argument in
general terms) that we are justified in subjecting our will and judgment to
another when (1) we are more likely to do the right thing by doing so than we
are by deciding for ourselves; and (2) this is not a matter for which there are
special reasons making it important that we decide for ourselves.'
I want to explore Raz's views about the concept of authority. Raz writes:

I keep referring to 'our' concept of authority. But is there such a thing? Are
there not several concepts, all of them descending from the very same ancestors?
Most probably so. Each person when using the concept of authority uses his
concept, and should allow for the possibility that there are several.4

* I am grateful to Joseph Raz and Dennis Patterson for comments on an earlier draft.
1. Joseph Raz, "Authority: Revisiting the Service Conception" (unpublished manuscript),
presented at the Conference, "Natural Law and Natural Rights in Contemporary Jurisprudence,"
Princeton University, September 2005. A version of that paper is forthcoming in the Minnesota
Law Review.
2. See, e.g., Joseph Raz, The Authority of Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), 3-27;
Joseph Raz, The Morality of Freedom (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), 38-69; Joseph Raz,
PracticalReason and Norms (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 62-65, 191-194;
Joseph Raz, Ethics in the Public Domain (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 194-221.
3. Raz, supra, note 1.
4. Ibid.
 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF JURISPRUDENCE Vol. 50

He adds:

Needless to say, if there are a number of concepts of authority prevalent in a

single society they are likely to be competitors. The boundaries between them
are fluid, and those who use each claim merit for it, and (when aware, if only
dimly, of the existence of the others) find reason to prefer it to the others. This
means that each explanation of a concept can also be used in the battle of
concepts, where there is such a battle, that is it can be used to advocate the
merits of one concept over its competitors.'

For Raz, the different conceptions of (legitimate6 ) authority are alternative

answers to the normative question, "when (if ever) is it justified not to seek
one's own best understanding of what should be done, but rather to act
according to the direction of another?" 7
At first, there may seem something strange about equating a concept with
the answer to a moral question, but it may be that an equation, or close
connection, between a concept and a normative inquiry is inevitable when the
concept is an evaluative term, like "good," "just," or "authoritative."
In his paper, Raz allows that perhaps we once had a distinctly different
concept of authority. The example Raz gives (legitimate governmental
authority derives from divine authority) 8 describes a time when people gave
a different answer to the normative question underlying "(legitimate)
authority"-and one that most of us would now consider clearly wrong. The
idea of competing concepts of authority may show that within Raz's analysis
one might have a slightly loosened connection between the concept and the
normative question, analogous to the general distinction between critical
morality and conventional morality: there are competing concepts of
authority, and changing concepts over time, as the conventional (but quite
fallible) beliefs about the normative inquiry change.

5. Ibid.
6. For Raz, "de facto authority" is parasitic on the concept of legitimate authority, for it
involves an entity claiming, but claiming falsely, to be a legitimate authority.
7. This draws on Robert Paul Wolff's famous challenge, from In Defense of Anarchism
(New York: Harper & Row, 1970).
The statement in the text may well be too simple, in at least one way. Central to Raz's
view of authority (and one of the main grounds for criticism of it), and a point that goes beyond
when a person or text is authoritative, is the role (for Raz, exclusionary and preemptive) that
authorities do or should play in our practical reasoning.
8. Raz, supra, note 1.
2005 BRIAN H. BIX

Ill. CONCEPT(S) OF LAW

I think it is instructive to compare Raz's current discussion of the concept

of authority with what he has written about the concept of law.
Raz has argued that legal theories are theories of our concept of law.9 One
might first ask: why should we study the concept if we can study the thing
itself (the practice, the type of institution) instead? Raz's answer is to deny
that the two can be separated;"° He argues that explaining the concept of law
is close to, but not identical with explaining the nature of law, but it is the
latter which is the primary task of legal theory.l" And the concept of law is
relevant primarily as it reflects the way people perceive the law.2
Raz rejects the notion that we (as theorists) can choose a concept of law
based, say, on its fruitfulness in further research,1 3 or even according to its
simplicity or elegance; 14 rather, it is a concept already present, already part of
our self-understanding. 5
Some might argue that the proper study of law-a social institution-is
through social theory. However, how can one have a (purely) "sociological"
or "empirical" theory of law if one does not have at least a rough prior notion
of what is or is not "law"? 6 There is a sense in which conceptual work must
be prior to empirical work. The focus of conceptual analysis is on the
boundaries of the category-here, what makes something "law" or "not law."
And this is not an empirical question in the same way as, say, investigating
patterns of judicial decision-making is an empirical question.17

9. See Joseph Raz, "Two Views of the Nature of the Theory of Law: A Partial
Comparison," Legal Theory 4 (1998) 249, 276; see also Joseph Raz, "On the Nature of Law,"
ArchivfiirRechts- und Sozialphilosophie 82 (1996) 1; Joseph Raz, "Can There Be a Theory of
Law?," in The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Law and Legal Theory, ed. Martin P.
Golding and William A. Edmundson (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), 324-342.
10. See, e.g., Raz, "Can There Be a Theory of Law?," 326, 331.
11. Ibid., 326-28.
12. Ibid., 328, 331.
13. Raz, Ethics in the Public Domain, 221.
14. Raz, "Can There Be a Theory of Law?," 331.
15. While Raz asserts that the concept of law "exists independently" of the legal philosophy
which attempts to explain it, Raz, "Two Views of the Nature of the Theory of Law," 280-81,
he also argues that since the concept(s) of law are in flux, our theories of law, even mistaken
theories, could influence the concept of law future generations have. Raz, "On the Nature of
Law," 7.
16. Cf. Frank Jackson, From Metaphysics to Ethics: A Defence of Conceptual Analysis
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
17. Though it is open to someone to argue that the category lines are in fact based on
empirically testable data: e.g., linguistic usage tendencies within a community.
 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF JURISPRUDENCE Vol. 50

While Raz's recent writings seemed to imply or assume a view that we all
share a single concept of law, 8 at the Conference, in response to an earlier
version of this Comment, Raz denied that he held that view. He stated that he
is not committed to there being only one concept of law in a country, though
"given the centrality of legal institution[s] in our societies it seems likely that
most articulate people share a concept of law. ' 9
A classical Platonist would likely assert that there is only a single Idea of
"law," of which our various legal systems are imperfect manifestations.
However, Platonism is a metaphysical position that many people find unlikely,
at least when applied to social practices and institutions. It is not hard to find
theorists who seem to support view that there are multiple, competing con-
cepts of law. 20 How should we determine whether there is one or many con-
cepts of law?
Raz is correct that the mere fact of divergence in beliefs about law or in the
application of the term/concept is insufficient to prove that there are multiple
concepts. As Raz states, such divergence may be explicable by mistake,
partial knowledge, vagueness in the concept itself, etc.2' And the fact that we
can talk about "law" without all of us always talking past one another
indicates that there is at least an overlap in the concepts (if there are more than
one), but this fact by itself certainly does not make the case for a single
concept conclusive.
It is tempting to say that concepts of law would be kept from multiplying
in a way that concepts of authority would not, by the fact that a concept of law
must fit institutional practices, while there seems no comparable constraint on
a concept of authority. This initially promising line of argument does not
seem likely to hold up, 22 however, in that, for both law and authority, the

18. Raz refers repeatedly to "the concept of law," e.g., Raz, "Two Views of the Nature of
the Theory of Law," 280-81 (emphasis added), and also note the singular "the concept" and "our
concept" throughout the relevant writings. E.g., Raz, "On the Nature of Law," 4 (emphasis
added).
19. This language is from a subsequent e-mail to me from Joseph Raz, Sept. 27, 2005,
confirming the position he took at the Conference.
20. Consider, e.g., the view of Stephen Perry, who argues that there is more than one
tenable theory of the nature of law, grounded on different tenable theories about the purpose of
law. See Stephen R. Perry, "Interpretation and Methodology," in Law and Interpretation,ed.
Andrei Marmor (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 97-135; Stephen R. Perry, "The
Varieties ofLegal Positivism," CanadianJournalofLaw and Jurisprudence9 (1996) 361. One
could easily re-characterize those claims as asserting that there are alternative concepts of law.
21. See Raz, "Authority: Revisiting the Service Conception"; Raz, "Can There Bea Theory
of Law?," 326-327.
22. At the Conference, Raz disagreed, commenting that the connection between the concept
of law and actual legal practices was in fact a reason for believing that it is somewhat more
2005 BRIAN H. BIX

question is one of category boundaries: how can we tell whether something

is law or not, or whether something is authoritative or not? In each case, we
have guidance from practice and linguistic usage, but conceptual analysis
involves the philosophical prerogative to clarify and modify existing practices.
If there are multiple tenable concepts of law, (a) on what basis do or should
individuals choose among them?; and (b) on what basis should legal theorists
choose in constructing their theories of law? In the jurisprudential literature,
there is discussion of the second question (whether such selections must be
made on robustly normative grounds, or can be made on meta-theoretical
grounds and on related considerations that are evaluative, but not moral or
political),23 but little if anything on the first inquiry. I think the possibility
and implications of competing concepts of law requires further consideration.

IV. THE CHALLENGE FOR CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS

There are tensions surrounding all conceptual claims within analytical legal
(and moral and political) theory. Any such claim, whether applied to
"authority" or to "law" or to some other subject, can be met by criticism from
one side, that it should be supplanted by empirical or sociological investiga-
tion, and criticism from another side, that it needs to be supplemented by
moral or political selection and argument.24
If we are trying to discover what "our concept" is-of authority, law, or
(say) honor-why would we25 consult a philosopher rather than, say, a pollster,
a linguist, or a sociologist?
A concept is a category of thought by which we divide up the world. The
question is, why should we care about the nature of these categories, of this
way of dividing up the world, if they do not correspond to some ultimate

likely for law than for authority that we have only a single concept rather than competing
concepts.
23. For arguments that meta-theoretical grounds would suffice, see, e.g., Raz, Ethics in the
Public Domain, 219-21; Jules Coleman, The Practiceof Principle(Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2001), 197-210; Andrei Marmor, "Legal Positivism: Still Descriptive and Morally
Neutral," USC Legal Studies Research Paper No. 05-16, http://ssm.com/abstract=763844; for
contrary views, see, e.g., the Perry articles cited in note 20.
24. For the latter critique, see, e.g., John Finnis, "Law and What I Should Truly Decide,"
American Journalof Jurisprudence48 (2003) 107, 125-126.
25. See Brian Leiter, "Beyond the Hart/Dworkin Debate: The Methodology Problem in
Jurisprudence," American Journal of Jurisprudence 48 (2003) 17, 40-51. For other, more
general skeptical discussions of conceptual analysis, see, e.g., Gilbert Harman, "Doubts About
Conceptual Analysis," in Philosophy in Mind: The Place of Philosophy in the Study of Mind,
ed. Michael Michaelis and John O'Leary-Hawthome (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1994), 43-48; Jerry
Fodor, "Water's Water Everywhere," London Review of Books, vol. 26, no. 20, Oct. 21, 2004.
 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF JURISPRUDENCE Vol. 50

reality? With the concept of authority, one can respond that the interest of the
inquiry (and the value of this way of dividing up the world) is that it involves
a particular, and important, normative question (when should we defer?), that
would be worth investigating even if there were no conventional concept that
corresponded to it. With law, the matter is different; one could reasonably ask
why we should care about the current conventional way of distinguishing
"law" and "non-law." The criticism would continue: the conventional dis-
tinction may have some interest for sociologists and linguists, but it may not
have significant philosophical interest. Further analysis is needed on the
question of why we should build theories about this conceptual boundary.

V. CONCLUSION

Those of us who think that the task of constructing theories of law is

valuable must give due attention to the project's methodological under-
pinnings. Joseph Raz has articulated the likely structure-that we are investi-
gating our concept of law-but there is still much work to be done in analyzing
whether there are multiple concepts, how one chooses among the concepts if
there are, and when and why our concepts are worthy of philosophical
investigation.